#52stories - Week 6 (Feb 8th)

Elementary school - part 1.

My siblings might have expected I would turn to them next, but I'm switching from family to other things.  I initially planned to have one entry on elementary school.but it got too long, so I split it into two parts.

There was no kindergarten where I started school.  But if you ask me sister, Cathie, she'll say she was my kindergarten teacher.

1st Grade: I attended 1st through 3rd grades at Fairfield High School in the village of Fairfield, VA. This school housed grades 1 through 12.  My dad taught 8th grade science and shop there, and he was the faculty sponsor for the Future Farmers of America (FFA). My aunt, Libby Alexander, also taught there and my cousin, Mary Lipscomb, substituted from time to time.  I rode the bus to school.  You can see a picture of the school on my post about my Dad in my week 5 story. My 1st grade teacher was Mrs. Hayes. She was stern and old (to me).  The classroom was by the gym if I remember correctly.  Mrs. Hayes made me stand in the corner one day after lunch because she said I kicked Duane Fitzgerald's ice cream out of his hand at lunch.  If I did, I had no clue and it would have been accidental.  She said he told her I was swinging between chairs.  OK, maybe I did that.  Still, you'd think I had to swing my legs pretty high to knock an ice cream cone out of his hands.  I remember learning the alphabet, which Cathie had probably already taught me, no doubt. One day when we were practicing writing our whole names, my cousin Alec (Alexander) Lipscomb crept back to my desk to ask me how to spell Alexander.  So I'm guessing Mrs. Hayes wouldn't let him just write Alec, which is what everyone called him and calls him today! 

2nd Grade: Mrs. Whitehurst was my teacher and her classroom was also off of the gym, I think..  She was even older than Mrs. Hayes (in my opinion) but she was super nice.  She taught us cursive writing.  I had my first boyfriend in 2nd grade: Joey Bishop.  His family moved away the following summer, so it was a short-lived romance. I learned Roman numerals this year.  I think it was an extra credit assignment, but I wrote them on paper up to MM (2000). The rest of second grade was uneventful.

3rd Grade: This was the year I had the mumps, which I covered in my week 1 story. Mrs. Borthwick was my teacher. She had us start the day with a checklist.  If we could check off each item on the checklist, we got a star!  The list included getting in bed by 9 pm the night before, having a clean handkerchief, eating breakfast, etc.  I think it included saying your prayers, too.  One day, I checked off the items and she said (in front of the entire class), "I know you weren't in bed by 9 last night because I saw you at the flower show at church."  I was devastated.  When I went home and told Mom, she said I was in bed by 9 and she was clearly miffed at the teacher.  Mrs. Borthwick drilled us on multiplication tables.  I credit her with my knowledge of those, but her method was terrifying!  She would line us up opposite other students and would point at one of us randomly and yell "3 times 9!" If you didn't answer in about 2 seconds, you got a scowl and she would turn to the next victim...er, student..and yell "3 times 9!" That continued until someone got it right.  Of course, your chances of getting the right answer increased with each failure because you had more time to recall the answer.  Mrs. Borthwick's class put on a play every year and alternated between an Indian theme and a cowboy theme.  It was cowboys my year, so we sang cowboy-themed songs and dressed like cowboys and cowgirls.  Below is a picture of our performance that appeared in The Lexington Gazette.

Mrs. Borthwick also wanted to make sure that we recognized the military branches theme songs.  So, again, she lined us up in four lines that created a square facing each other.  She would designate one line each the Marines, Army, Air Force, and Navy.  Then she would play one of the songs and the appropriate line was supposed to march in place.  I remember her playing The Cassion Song and everyone looking nervously around waiting for someone to recognize the song.  When the pressure got to be too much, one of the lines starting marching that was not the Army line and she yelled, "No, no, no! You're not the Army! That's the Army song!"  I don't know if we ever got it right.  She had "seat work" to keep us occupied while she was working with subgroups of the class.  Mainly this consisted of making a list of words from the letters of a larger word.  My skill at this came in handy in 5th grade. Another memory is that a show was being presented in the auditorium by some external group and a live kangaroo was there.  I really wanted to see that kangaroo, but admission was a dime and I didn't remember to bring a dime.  Mrs. Borthwick let me go to my dad's class to see if I could get a dime from him.  His classroom was in a separate building but no one heard me knocking on the door, so I didn't get the dime.  I was one of about three students who didn't get to go.  We also took field trips in 3rd grade.  Two that I remember were a visit to the local newspaper at The Lexington Gazette and a performance of the National Symphony Orchestra.  Both of these were in Lexington, VA. The National Symphony performed Peter and the Wolf and the conductor (I assume) explained to us which animals the various instruments represented.  Before the performance, someone from the paper came up and got three of us seated on the end of the row to go down and see the instruments up close.  So Carol Ramkey, Duane Fitzgerald (of the aforementioned ice cream incident), and I got to strum a harp and play a drum. Our picture appeared in The Gazette, as shown below.

Looking back at these makes me think  that Mrs. Borthwick had a parent who acted as the class's public relations person.  Last memory of 3rd grade: One Sunday, Bly Ann Buzzard and I had sat together in church and whispered to each other a couple of times.  Mrs. Borthwick sang in the choir.  The next day, she began class with the announcement, "I was so embarrassed by you and you for talking in church yesterday!" as she pointed to Bly Ann and me.  Sheesh.